After talking to Vetra, Gil, Drack, Kallo, Suvi and Lexi, he looked all over his ship for his last crew member. He was sure there were nine of them but apparently, one was missing.
"SAM, where's K?" he asked in defeat, peering at the empty quarters again.
"She is at the escape pod near the cargo bay," the AI answered.
"Escape pod? She's at the escape pod all that time? " he wondered.
"Yes. She has been in there for four hours and counting."
What was interesting about an escape pod for her to spend hours in it? he wondered as he walked to the cargo bay and went to the escape pod's door which opened before him. There he found his quarry as the AI said. She was really in there, but she was also surrounded by a bunch of equipment which he recognized as a mix of tech from Remnant and the hostile aliens.
"Woah!" he said, prompting her to turn around and face him. "What are those? And are those cleared?" he asked, pointing at the pile.
"Oh! These are just some project of mine. Yes, they're cleared; I had Gil and Kallo check them before bringing them on board. I also have containment shields put on it just in case." Scott opened his mouth to reply but she did not wait for him to answer and hurried on, "I know bringing in unknown tech is dangerous so this is why I'm working on them in an escape pod. So if it goes crazy you can just shoot the whole pod away." She paused as she thought it over. "Preferably without…me. In it. Because I'm with you. Here?" she asked him with a hopeful look.
Scott looked long at her, considering her proposal. "Well, If we did shoot the pod away with you in it, we'll be sure to inform you first."
She put a hand on her hips and laughed awkwardly. "Haha. That's so funny." Then the smile dropped and she sobered, looking fearfully at him. "Wait, you're joking, right?"
Scott smiled. "Of course I'm joking. What do you take us for, barbarians?"
She laughed-coughed in relief and she exclaimed, "By the goddess' droopy tits! Please, Scott, don't joke at me like that."
Scott chuckled at her reaction. "Okay. I promise this is the last time I'll do that."
She laughed genuinely this time and she was still smiling when she asked, "So, what can I do for you?"
"Just checking up, see how the whole crew's getting together." "Are you sure this is a good place for you to be working on that?" he asked, gesturing at the white interior of the pod which was lit up too harsh and bright, making both of them looked washed-out. "It's not very roomy. Besides, we need the escape pod just in case of, you know, this whole ship about to blow up and we need to bail?"
"I'm sorry. There isn't any more room for it anywhere on the ship and I can't work with a lot of noise around. I thought you wouldn't mind," she said, looking like a kicked puppy. "But I understand. I'll move it out."
"No. Keep it here for a moment. I'll find a space for a lab for you soon," he said, thinking of the Pathfinder's Cabin. The room was shaped like a half-moon and half as big as their cargo bay, with the king-sized bed in the middle, a little living room on the side and the study table on the other side. It was easily the prettiest room on the ship, with the screen of the passing stars at the head of the bed and the floor made of dark faux wood. But he thought it was extravagant, particularly when half his crew was forced to bunk together in a cabin a little more than a box and colored the same boring Initiative gray with only a single study table for amenities. Perhaps he can ask Gil and Vetra to partition the living room off since he rarely uses it to make a lab for K and drill a hole in the kitchen adjacent to it to make a door.
Idly, he wondered what his father would make of it if the original Pathfinding team survived. Or what he would think of his father sleeping in luxury while he's slumming it in shitty quarters.
He shook his thoughts off. Whatever. It won't happen and what was important was the present, which at this time, was beaming.
"Really?" K said, her eyes going big with happiness. "Thank you. You're so kind."
"You're welcome."
"I won't forget this. I promise you'll be the first one to view the results of my study when I'm done with them."
As if he wouldn't. Would she withhold her research if he didn't offer her a more comfortable room? he wondered.
"Great. I'll look forward to it." He nodded at the tech. "So, any progress?"
"Hmm." She turned her back to him and stood with a hip cocked and both hands on it. "Not much, particularly because they're two different systems," she said, also looking at it. "I don't know the code of that one," she said, pointing at the black Remnant tech with the glowing green lines running across its surface, "and that's one's genetically locked,' she said, pointing at the alien tech. "Also it's organically inspired, so technically, it's dead."
"Dead? How can tech be dead?"
"Well, its functions are similar to an organism than to our tech. I had Dr. Lexi take a look at it and she said there are growth lines there, like rings of a tree. Also a nervous system instead of wires."
"You mean the base back at the monolith was a tree? We're attacking a tree?"
She conjured the image of the base on her omni-tool which looked more like a head of garlic than a tree with its bulbous walls. "That doesn't look like a tree I know. But yes, something like that."
He returned his gaze at the tech, with his mouth agape. "Wow."
"Yep. Wow," she agreed, closing her omni-tool and joined him in looking in wonder at the pile.
"No regrets leaving the Milky Way behind?" he asked. "Family? Your home?"
She turned to him with a smirk. "Why would I be? My home is just a tiny village in a forest somewhere in Sanves, going overgrown with weeds you'd choke on if the old biddies there didn't get to you first with their 'great age and wisdom'," she said, with a mocking tone at the last three words. "As for my parents, I don't think they'd miss me much since they sure were prompt in kicking me out when I turned legal."
"Oh. I'm sorry," he said, forgetting that not all were lucky to have his parents.
"It's alright. They weren't bad, not really. They're just…disinterested."
"Where did you go after that?"
Her face clouded over. "Well, I went to get my degrees at the University of Plonaea at the capital, Etheai and then went on finding and fixing…stuff. I'm not rich enough to go and study unknown tech like those of the Protheans so," she expelled a breath, "here I am."
She's not rich enough to be part of the digs on Prothean artifacts but she had money to purchase a berth at the Initiative?
"But you can afford a ticket to here?"
She shifted uncomfortably. "Um, let's just say I have...someone who…paid for me," she said.
"A sponsor?"
"You can say that. Does it apply to a girlfriend?"
"Oh."
"Ex-girlfriend now, actually. I realized I can't stand her face after waking up from a very long sleep."
A thought occurred to him. Maybe that was why she was rushing to get in with them back at the docks?
He thought it wasn't good of her to bail out on someone who paid for her trip here but she was looking extremely embarrassed right now. He was about to change the subject when the intercom beeped. "Scott, Kallo here. We've arrived at Eos," their pilot informed him.
"Got it. I'll be there shortly," he answered and the line went silent.
"Well, That's it. Nice talking to you, K," he said, smiling at her. "Now let's go see our new colony." She nodded, looking very relieved that they stopped talking about her problems and together they left the pod.
Although they have secured a planet for their needs, their problems weren't over. An orbital scan of the planet revealed an outpost of the hostile aliens many miles north of the vault and shielded by unknown means. There was also some strange facilities near it, with a series of giant towers shaped like a T on a great stretch of the desert. What they were they do not know; they had no further capabilities to make extensive studies on it except cursory observations. They have no offense nor defense capabilities which did not cheer August Bradley on the prospect of his given assignment as their first colony's mayor. 'Between Scylla and Charybdis' was how he put it. Either they risk getting attacked by the aliens or they starve to death. Still, his easy-going manner and his ability to be cool even under stress brought about by his long career in the Alliance helped mask his concerns on his crinkly, kind face, which reassured his colonists and strengthened their morale.
They could not risk provoking the aliens or settle far away from the vault with its great but mysterious terra-forming capabilities so they finally settled in an end of a canyon, the cliffs shielding them from the great winds made abrasive by Eos' sand. They have no water, but with the vault producing oxygen and the Nexus shipping in their hydrogen refined from the gas giant it orbited, their water problem was solved by making fuel cells from both. The resulting reactions gave them enough water for their needs and so they were fine for now. That is, until the Initiative's eezo supply runs out so they were hoping, nay, praying at the vault to give them a miracle.
Sloane had lent a small group of their working shuttles for them and also sent a satellite to orbit the planet to watch the alien facilities and monitor the alien activities as they go on and off the planet. It wasn't a lot of protection but if the aliens decided to get antsy at them, the satellite could at least warn Podromos to evacuate and the shuttles can carry them off before the colony gets destroyed.
The Pathfinding team arrived in Podromos to check out their first colony, giddy like new parents over their newborn. The colony doesn't look like much, just prefab structures plopped down on the ground, but at least it's running. There's an ops center, then a science center, offices, med bay, then quarters and a greenhouse for testing agriculture viability. Scott talked with Bradley about how he'd run the colony. He was satisfied with the man's replies and thought him as capable, dependable and a quick thinker, exactly what a colony in the frontier needs. He expressed how happy he was that Podromos has such a man to look after it, which made Bradley very happy and he directed them to meet the other members of his team, starting with the overseer, Hainly Abrams.
Scott, Cora and Marcus went to find the overseer while the others went around to look at the product of their work. They found Hainly at an office with a glass window at one end to let the natural light in and with walls made of drab gray with darker gray accents and floor. There were panels and random pipes running across the walls made of rusty steel and at one side, Hainly Abrams was busy at her desk drawing the work schedules for the day and the week. The overseer has a small tanned face, with short dark hair and dark eyes. She had light make-up on, with purple eyeshadow on her lids and berry-colored lips, even though she was doing frontier work.
"Ah, Pathfinder," she greeted, standing up and putting her work away. She walked around her desk to stand in front of him and offer a hand. "I hear you're the one we have to thank for our physics-defying atmosphere processor."
"Just doing my job," Scott said, taking her hand and shaking it. She has a rather nice deep husky voice that seemed too luxurious to hear in a hardscrabble colony.
"And being humble about it," she remarked, a smiling. "Hainly Abrams, colony overseer here on Eos. Bradley's the one making the big decisions here; I only run the day to day operations. In my spare time, I'm also a writer of papers that start with "What the hell, weather?" But since we're prioritizing military defense, we may be asking that question for a while. New galaxy, New world, and a really new start. Got to keep up," she said cheerfully. She seemed passionate about her job and he hoped her enthusiasm will rub off on the colonists here. "How can I help you?"
Scott gestured around them. "I'm just checking in and see how you're doing."
"We're doing great. We've already seen changes since you triggered the vault. Nothing scary just yet. I swiped some military scanners to keep an eye on things. Best I can do."
"How do you feel about our first colony being a military outpost?"
Her nose wrinkled slightly. "Honestly, I don't like it much. It isn't what the initiative was for, isn't it? We need to understand Eos, research on remnant tech but our budget's earmarked for military research," she said and sighed. "A scientific outpost would be a better complement to our farms. We could get food produced faster with it."
"We still don't know what kind of threats we have here," Scott said. "Like the aliens just beyond the mountains. So you'll have to be patient with us military people for a little longer until we make sure the colony's safe for everyone."
She nodded, more to accept than to agree. "You're right. I don't doubt you've chosen the best for us, Pathfinder. I guess if we want something else, we'll first have to make this work, then."
"Is there something else you need?"
She hesitated. "I...have a request, Pathfinder, if you don't mind."
"Sure. What is it?"
She looked embarrassed, biting her lip. "This is...really awkward. I don't know how to put this delicately."
"it's alright. You can trust me."
She looked at him, opened her mouth then suddenly changed her mind. She smiled apologetically and shook her head. "We've already taken so much of your time Pathfinder. I'm sure I can ask Bradley to find my missing people."
"Someone's missing?" He remembered Bradley outside yelling orders to set a perimeter around the colony and watchtowers on the ridge above them, along with asking about the status of their facilities. The man looked extremely busy and so Scott took pity on him. Besides, they don't have priority missions yet. "Hainly-can I call you Hainly?" She nodded. "Hainly, I want to help."
She looked away from him and down, bowing her head slightly as she deliberated something. "Yes, some people are missing," she said at last. "And I can't pull out other workers to search for them because they're busy making this colony work. I can't go out myself since I'm still recovering."
"Recovering? Are you sick?"
"No," she said sharply. "Sorry," she apologized for her tone. "I'm not sick. I'm just recovering from major surgery. Organ transplants. I'm still getting used to having a womb and dealing with the hormones. Anyway, I was cleared to do office work but not heavy tasks like traipsing around in the desert searching for missing people."
"Why would the doctors clear you to work with that status?"
"They can't spare anyone else. A lot of people died so recovering or not, I have to go," she answered and shrugged. "Besides, you'd be amazed at the tech here at the Initiative. They really overdid themselves. It's the reason why I joined the Initiative. I've got a cushy job back at the Alliance, helping them establish colonies in the Attican Traverse as part of their expansion plan. I was great at my job, and I didn't understand why people would want to settle two million light-years away when you can do it closer to home. But the Initiative offered something better than the Alliance. They offered me the chance to be true to myself. And they kept it. I'm living like I wanted to," she said, her eyes brimming with happiness.
"You'd be willing to settle two million light-years just for that?" he asked, in awe rather than criticism.
"Some people just can't grasp the idea of being forced to live as someone else just because they were lucky not to experience it. The existential horror of it. Knowing who you are but people kept telling you you're wrong, as if they knew you better than you knew yourself." She sighed. "But I'm free of it now and I'm happy to live truly as I wished, even if it's somewhere two million light-years away from home."
She didn't need to inform them the details of the surgery, of the female reproductive organs made from her own cells and the implants that released and regulated the hormones her new organs need and the augments for her immune system which was dampened to reduce rejection. With those, no one can tell she was not born female, for she looked like one externally and internally. Only by examining her DNA will anyone know she was male once and once was called Stephen.
"Well, I'm glad you've found happiness here," Scott said and he meant it. The Initiative was craving for good news and after all the problems they've encountered since arriving here, it was gratifying to hear about someone whose wish was already fulfilled.
"So, do I," she said, beaming. "Anyway, those workers won't find themselves." She handed him a datapad where he saw a work crew with mixed members headed by someone named Jennings. "The work crew were assigned to test agriculture viability on a designated site just west of here. They did go and do it, but they keep talking about the Remnant tech. They think the Initiative's lying about how dangerous it is—that a couple of electrodes in the right place could get the Remnant to work for them instead. I dismissed it as absurd since we already have our own drones to do the manual labor. I told them to focus on their job and let other people more qualified than them to worry about it. But, it seems they're more stubborn than I thought because days later, I found one of them in the med bay and the rest missing. Remnant Observers have carved Bharti up. Before he died, I asked him where the rest was. I got nothing else, only that Jennings told them they could live like kings if they had an army of Remnant bots working and fighting for us. He took the whole work crew to help him this time."
Scott finished reading the datapad and handed it back to her. Not even a week and their colonists had broken away and doing their own thing. "Seems like this Jennings thought they could take control of a remnant."
"That's a really bad idea," Cora seconded.
Hainly nodded. "The Initiative seemed to not care much in the type of colonists they're getting," she explained. "They seem to have taken all that could pay for the trip. So it's up to us to wrangle them into the colonist we need them to be."
"Alright, Hainly. I'll look into this."
"Thank you, Pathfinder. I suggest starting at the med bay and see whether you can find anything to trace where they went."
They waved goodbye to Hainly and proceeded to the med bay at the other end of the colony. With their armor on and its environmental controls, they did not feel the sun's sharp rays bearing down on them and the sand hot beneath their feet, but they could see Eos' unbearable heat from the sizzling air above the ground as they walked. They reached the med bay and entered, the place not looking very different from Hainly's office except for the absence of desks which was replaced by beds and consoles. There were medical people in their red and white coats working around, and when they asked, they were directed by one to Bharti's corpse chilled in one of the lockers. The corpse was brought out and after being told of the cause of death, they were left alone to examine it. By analyzing the sand composition from the deceased Bharti's boot, SAM was able to deduce that they came from the monolith they passed before, southeast of Podromos in the Fairwinds Basin. They drove there by the Nomad and once they arrived, they found a broken comm array on the floor with the corpses of some of the renegade colonists near it, their skin riddled with holes. The skin around the wounds was seared.
"Here we go," Scott muttered, taking his gun out as they headed towards the bodies. At once, remnant bots appeared, as they expected. After fighting the remnant bots, Scott had SAM hack the broken comm array while the other two checked on the bodies and tagged them for extraction and burial. They listened in to the conversations the array was receiving.
"Easy money," they heard a human say. "Once the electrical charge build-up, we'll have ourselves some nice obedient remnant."
A Turian scoffed at the other end and she said, "You better be sure this time, Jennings."
"If you're that spooked, go hide behind the four giants," Jennings answered irritably. "I'm busy." With that, the comm channel closed.
"We've got to find them before they get themselves killed," Scott muttered. They went off to the Nomad and drove to the Four Giants, which were named because the four towering pillars of rock look like the mythical creatures of old. The pillars shaded a protrusion of the vault where remnant bots swarmed like bees around it. They were just in time, for Remnant bots were just about to overwhelm the work crew.
The work crew was huddled in one of the corners, screaming at the flanking bots when they arrived. At once, the Pathfinder team jumped out of the Nomad and opened fire at the bots to draw their attention away from the colonists. As Scott stripped the floating bots of their shields, Cora was charging all over the place, drawing the bots attention, turning their backs on the two, which made it easy either for Scott to snipe them or for Marcus to sneak behind them and bury an omni-blade in their backs.
"Great timing. Thanks for the assist," a human said to them after the firefight was over. He opened his helmet, revealing a clean shaved face with a bald head, dowsed with sweat and pale with subsiding fear. He smiled and offered a hand to shake, exceedingly happy at seeing another fellow human, but Scott glowered pointedly at the offered hand and crossed his arms instead.
"Looks like your experiment with the remnant didn't work out," Scott jeered.
Jennings stared at him, the smile on his lips fading, then withdrew the hand. "Hm-okay who squeaked?" he demanded, all affability gone. "Kasperek? Yeah, I bet."
"Your boss Hainly asked me to look for you."
"That damned tranny," Jennings cursed. "These remnants could plow our fields, protect us from Kett. And he-she-whatever doesn't get it. Calls it low-priority and have someone more qualified to look into it. The Nexus should have made the overseer someone who's got plenty of ideas."
"Hey," Scott called sharply. "Stop calling her that. If it wasn't for her caring enough for your dumb ass to ask someone to look for you, you'd be dead."
Jennings raised his hands up. "Fine. I'll ease up on how I call Hainly. But I'm not giving up on the Remnant. You could control them. Why shouldn't we?"
"Because I've got help from an advanced VI. And I have a team of specialists with me. Even then, we can only manage to open and close the doors and push some buttons. We can't program the Remnant bots to stop shooting at us. So drop it, Jennings; if I can't make the remnant work for me, then you can't."
Jennings stared at him then he snarled. "I can't believe this. You, the fucking pathfinder, wouldn't even try to won't let others do it."
"Because it gets many people killed, Jennings. Far too many people died because of your idea. And if you still don't believe that lives are important after all that, we can go to the vault right now, stick you in and see if your idea works."
"Pathfinder's got a point," the Turian beside Jennings said. "How many people need to get hurt before you stop this?"
Jennings stared at her then at Scott, whose face showed no sign of being merciful. "Eh, fine," he said in exasperation, throwing his hands up. "But you can't protect us all the time, Pathfinder. Out here, we need every edge we can get."
"That's for Bradley and your boss Hainly to decide," Scott said dismissively. Jennings glared at him but he stared him down until Jennings was encouraged to look away first. "Learn to follow first, Jennings, before you try to lead."
AN: Thanks for the reviews. Each one motivates me to continue writing. And as for those requesting that I update faster, I'm sorry but this is the fastest I could go. I don't have a background on either physics or military sci-fi so it takes a lot of research for me to get the sci-fi aspect right. I didn't intend to write sci-fi at first because I knew that I know nothing about science but I'm pissed enough with the game to undertake the monumental task of improving my knowledge so I could be at least decent with the genre.
Some of you are probably wondering why there's no Liam and Peebee here. Truth is, I can't stand them, that if I have to write about them, I might just kill them. To start, Liam. I have never met a character with such inanity. Sure, Jacob's boring but at least he's competent. Liam...ugh. Yes, I get the writer's intention of having someone whose ideals clash greatly with reality but really, do they have to make that character annoying by constantly lecturing his ideals on everybody else for not living up to it so he ends up judgemental and eventually, foolish? I'm still fine when he couldn't get along with everybody until his loyalty mission happened. How dare he lecture me about how to be a Pathfinder when he himself is a failed cop? Insult to injury is that you're left gaping there like a fish instead of asking him his qualifications for judging people and so let him walk away with the last word with a smug look on his face. He has an interesting arc, but the writers blew it when at the end of the mission, he either is enabled on being a judgemental prick and out of touch with reality or stubborn and arrogant beyond help and also out of touch with reality? There's no character development there because he still ends up the same way. Icing on the cake that whatever you chose, you still get the "You have achieved Liam's loyalty" message despite feeling that you should drop him off the nearest mining colony after his mission.
But my dislike of him does not compare to Peebee which I really want to yeet off the starboard side. Despite having the instant eject button for Sera, I never used it but I really wish there was one for Peebee here, because it not being present is really increasing my dislike of her. To start, before we can let her join the crew, I spotted a couple red flags about her which should have let me refuse to take her aboard. When she jumped down the hole without looking first where she's landing, refusing to go with the team and refusing to listen to me, she made an impression to me of being impulsive, does not work with the team and not obedient. All three which tells me that she is not a good fit for my team. But I am not given an option to refuse her coming aboard which is making me annoyed not with the character, but with the writers. Then upon coming aboard what was the first thing she did? She asked me to find a bauble for her and I'm like, "Excuse me, bitch, do I look like a maid to you?" And then she quarrels with my second and makes my doctor cry. And then she refuses to save the asari ark filled with people like her and children, because "they're old biddies"? With such an obvious sign of sociopathy, why aren't we given an option to just throw her off? And after all this, what was her reason for being so odious? "Kalinda abused me." Boooohooooo, my ex treated me badly and so I became an asshole to everyone, even those I don't have any romantic attachments with. Cringy occult thinking. And Kalinda wasn't even that bad, just your regular mustache twirling villain. I don't see her being extremely terrifying or manipulative. She's just petty and we're supposed to believe that she's bad enough to make Peebee that way? Pleeeeeaaaaasssseeeee. Peebee makes real victims of abuse look like petty assholes.
But some of you might say "But Peebee is a teenager in asari years!" Look, you may enjoy being a nanny to children but I don't, especially when you're fighting for every scrap of food. I'd much prefer they were kept at home under supervision. And isn't it weird that you have someone who acts so sexual despite being a child? Jailbait alert.